Growing Up Around Mental Illness

I remember when I was Twelve years old, My mother had a nervous breakdown. We took her to Doctors. Catscans found a mass on the brain.  We were told overtime she would only get worse.

When you are that age you have no real concept of time. I watched my mother slowly deteriorate mentally from that time on.  She has been diagnosed with everything from Schizophrenia, to Manic Depression and now advanced dementia.  I am not sure if she has ever been properly diagnosed.

I was always a nice, caring, person by nature. I want to say that even though it was very very difficult growing up with a mentally ill mother, I was never resentful or angry toward her.  I was sad and confused for her. I never was the type to make waves or tell of my own problems at school or with other peers because I was always told they were not as important as my mothers mental health.

When she was in her lucid moments I would talk to her about things and she would say she did not remember behavior she had, had. Can you imagine missing half your life like that.

From that time, My mother has never been able to be left alone, It was horrible to watch her in her bad times, since she was a very nurturing person by nature.

What made her mental illness so much worse was that I was told not to talk about it, that people would not understand.  Even more difficult was when I was having certain normal teenage problems, I was told I was going to be just like my mother.  There were members of her family telling me this.  What was so frightening was that for a while I was afraid they were right.  It took me a very long time to realize what happened to her wasnt going to happen to me and what I was going through was “normal” to a point.

I never did drugs, drank or ran around probably because I had so much “grown up stuff” to worry about.

Because, of the way my mother’s family handled her mental illness, with the secrecy and whatever. I never had close ties with people or felt they would understand.  As I have grown older, I realize how common mental illness is. I know to a point mental illness can be inherited that doesn’t mean everyone in the family suffers from it, yet that is how I was treated.   It even today makes me angry when I hear that type of thing.

I am now able to talk about this more freely once I realized that

1.  Times have changed.

2. Doctors know more about mental illness.

3.  It is nothing to be ashamed of.

My mother never killed anyone or really hurt anyone else in any other way. Y et at times that old fashioned stigma is still there.